


Like Cats and Wolves

by Masu_Trout



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Bedsharing, Enemies Working Together, Ghosts, Hurt/Comfort, Kaer Morhen, M/M, Mentions of past sexual assault, Post-episode 1, casefic, of a sort, wound care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:40:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27792445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: When Geralt finds a would-be mortal enemy tortured and left to die, he has no choice but to help. But his brief act of mercy pulls him back to Kaer Morhen, into a plot bigger than he could've guessed—and forces him to confront the all-too-literal ghosts of his past.
Relationships: Geralt of Rivia/Original Male Witcher(s)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 40
Collections: Heart Attack Exchange 2020





	Like Cats and Wolves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mornelithe_falconsbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mornelithe_falconsbane/gifts).



> The Witcher's great to write in because I can just throw whatever obscene degree of injury I want at a character and then go, "Witcher healing, fuck yeah" to allow them to survive. :D
> 
> This is set in the long timeline gap that occurs after Episode 1 but before the rest of the plot kicks into gear. Characterization and major plot/timeline features are all TV canon, but worldbuilding details like the different witcher schools, the Cat School, and aspects of the timeline not touched on in the show are pulled in here and there from game and/or book canon to fill things in as the plot requires.

The man in the tree wasn't the first impaled body Geralt had seen, and it most certainly wasn't going to be the last. It wasn't a convenient way to kill someone, or a clean way, or a strategic way—but it was deeply cruel, and there were men enough in this world who valued brutality over cleverness or strength. 

The thick, twisted branches of the tree the man's killers had chosen kept the corpse half-cradled in their grasp, one of the largest and sharpest forced harshly through his side. His sun-beaten body hung just low enough that his feet might brush Geralt's head as he and Roach passed beneath; his clothes were simple and unassuming leather armor soaked with dark blood; and his hair, black and long, fell in a thick wave around his head, hiding whatever damage might have been done to his face from view. If not for the blood and the branch, he could almost be a traveler who'd chosen a strange place to sleep.

Probably bandits, Geralt thought, giving Roach's reins a tug to keep her from walking directly under the body's limp form. This far into the wilderness, there was little else it could be. The mountain ranges of Kaedwen were brutal, lawless places, unkind to anyone without riches enough to buy bodyguards, skill enough with a blade to drive the thieves away, or the strength of a witcher to keep them safe. 

(Vesemir used to reminisce, sometimes, about the golden age of witchers, the majesty of Kaer Morhen and the peace of the lands around it. Geralt could never guess whether that time had ever truly existed at all or whether it was only an ancient nostalgia, reality dulled and made softer with every passing year; even in his childhood, when Kaer Morhen still held more than ghosts and regret, the good fortune and peace Vesemir spoke of hadn't existed there. And with the great keep little more than a ruin now, the School of the Wolf a dying breed, whatever prosperity Vesemir dreamed of still would never be returning.)

Geralt shook his head, drawing himself out of his thoughts. He didn't know why he was dwelling on this now. Maybe it was just that he was as close to his childhood home as he had been in decades—a great many miles away, of course, and not planning on getting any closer, but still. Kaer Morhen was a hard place to forget.

Or perhaps it was just the body. There was always something strange about seeing someone left alone to rot. Geralt murmured a few words under his breath as Roach stepped past the corpse, as much to prevent it from rising again as out of respect, and—

The corpse _howled_. It spasmed, a sudden violent gesture; the hands that had been hanging limply at its sides came up to claw furiously at the branch pinning it in place; the head shook and writhed with the force of its sudden fury.

"Shit!" Geralt snapped, pulling Roach up short. What the fuck was this? 

Roach danced backwards with a snort, every muscle suddenly tense, one step away from bolting off into the deep forest undergrowth. Geralt could see the whites of her eyes. Pressure on the reins, careful soothing movements—he glanced away from the not-so-dead body to focus for a moment on getting her back under control, trying to keep her from fleeing. If she threw him now, it wouldn't be _fatal_ —a broken back wasn't nearly enough to kill a witcher—but lying paralyzed on the ground while some sort of undead beast feasted on his entrails absolutely would be, and it would be an unpleasant way to go. 

But the thing in the form of a man, whatever it was truly was, wasn't coming down from its cradle; it was still moaning to itself, still clawing at its impalement, but the fury that had taken it in those first few moments had faded to a kind of desperate wounded terror. Once Geralt was sure Roach wouldn't bolt, he took another glance up at it (one hand on the silver, the other ready to make a sign at a moment's notice). 

It wasn't any sort of undead Geralt knew, not hanging up there like it was. If it were buried in an unmarked grave or thrown overboard at sea or hanged by the neck, he'd know in an instant what sort of creature the dead man had become. Impalings, though, didn't have any sort of spirit attached to them. An illusion, perhaps? But if it was, it was a strange one—and besides, Geralt couldn't sense any of the sort of telltale hints of unreality that accompanied that sort of trickery: no odd repetition, lack of scents in the air, or bits of scenery that seemed to be missing detail.

Which meant this was real and not a spirit of any sort. With those two options ruled out, there was one possibility left.

The corpse's eyes, open now and no longer hidden by hair, found Geralt's and widened in recognition. The two of them, mirror images, stared at each other.

"Witcher," he whispered, voice raspy and heavy with pain. His hands left his wound and the branch embedded there to reach for Geralt instead. "Please... I..."

The attempt at speech took more out of him than the desperate fury had managed to. He held Geralt's gaze a moment longer, his expression caught between hope and fear, and then with one last noise that sounded more like an animal's cry of pain than anything human his body relaxed and he slipped back into unconsciousness.

The forest went silent again, undisturbed save for the man's thin, reedy breathing, so quiet that even Geralt had to strain to hear it. The scent of blood and infection was rolling off the not-so-much-a-corpse in waves; he smelled more like a dead man than a living one.

"Well, fuck."

A live man, injured beyond what any being should be able to survive and yet still trying to fight. Geralt wouldn't have even needed to see the bright gold irises and the slitted pupils of the stranger's eyes to know what that meant.

Not a _man_ at all. A fellow witcher—overpowered and tortured and left strung up to die with his medallion stolen from around his neck. It could mean only one thing.

Someone here was hunting them.

* * *

Cutting loose an impalement victim was no easy task. If he pulled him straight off the branch, he'd only bleed to death—even witchers had their limits, in the end, and this man had already come very close to meeting his if the amount of blood staining his clothes was any indication. Geralt had to climb, one-handed, up the base of the tree, grab hold of the man there to keep him from falling the moment he was freed, and cut away a section of the branch small enough to be able to disentangle him from the cradle of twisted boughs and lower him to the ground.

The wound was purulent and oozing. The stranger's skin, when Geralt put a hand to his forehead, felt hot and swollen tight. He lay limply against Geralt's shoulder as Geralt picked him up, the way his eyelids occasionally fluttered and small pained noises slipped through his lips the only signs of life.

Damn it. Geralt wasn't looking forward to seeing what was beneath his clothing, if this was how bad everything looked with it on. And there was no chance of getting the stranger on Roach's back without tying him there; he'd fall off in a moment if Geralt tried to ride double, and Geralt had a sick sort of feeling that if the man hit the ground right now he might just burst. He seemed more like a piece of rotted meat with skin stitched over top than a person.

He gently laid the unconscious man over Roach's back, tying him in as many places as he could with spare belts and bits of cloth. Then, on foot, Geralt began to guide Roach back the way he came along the narrow forest path, avoiding the worst of the dips in the path and going slowly enough to keep from aggravating the wounds.

Geralt had passed a clearing not too long ago. The ties would hold until Geralt got them there. Assuming, of course, that whatever had tried to kill this man didn't come back.

He kept his hand on the pommel of his silver sword as he walked, just in case.

* * *

There was a stream on the edge of the clearing, barely more than a trickle—Geralt's first task, after pulling the unconscious witcher off of Roach's back and starting up a low, smokeless fire, was to gather as much water as he could from it and set it to boil. 

"Just our luck, isn't it?" he told Roach as he worked, her silence a comfort in the face of the stranger's shallow, labored breathing. "Could've been at the next town over by evening, but here we are. I'd rather meet a monster than this. Something I could fight. These wounds, though... never been much of a medic. Not the most useful skill set. Not with our healing."

Roach stomped one foot, her ears flicking back.

"Yeah," Geralt agreed. "It does feel like a trap."

No one had come to kill the two of them yet. Maybe no one would. But stringing a witcher up in a tree was... suspicious, to say the least. There was no good reason to leave one of his kind out in the elements, if you truly wanted them dead; witchers had a nasty habit of surviving things that were supposed to be certain death. The location—and the intricacy of it with it, the branch impaled so carefully through the man's chest—whispered to Geralt of the possibilities of curses, strange rituals, violent dark magic.

Blood was a useful ingredient for certain kinds of spellcraft. Witcher's blood even more so. If some mage out there had been hoping to use this man, it wouldn't take long for them to realize their prize ingredient was missing—and they wouldn't be happy once they did.

No time to worry about that just yet, though. Whatever this danger actually was, getting the stranger coherent enough that he might be able to answer Geralt's questions was the first step to fighting it.

Once he had the pot boiling in a low roil, the fire glowing a somber cherry-red beneath it, he got to the unpleasant work of determining the extent of the injuries. The man's armor, studded leather reinforced in at the joints with chain mail, was a complete loss—not much any armorer could do to fix leather that had been torn apart by a tree branch. Geralt didn't hesitate for a moment to grab his sword and begin the careful, finicky work of cutting it off without taking the man's skin with it. When he finally had it in pieces, carefully separated at every weak point Geralt could find, he had to take a moment to breathe before peeling it off of him.

The stench beneath was indescribable. Geralt didn't often regret having a witcher's senses, but breathing in the smell of warm, wet, purulent rot made him long to take his blade to his own nose. Every part of his skin that Geralt touched was grotesquely warm and damp with sweat, the witcher's wounded body fighting its hardest but in danger of losing to the infection.

It was going to get worse before it could get better. Geralt was going to need to cut some of this away if he wanted to let the flesh heal.

The spot where the branch had punctured him was the worst of it all: a hole nearly the size of a krona still oozing blood, slick and wet, the skin around the wound so red and swollen that it was in danger of splitting open just from the force of infection beneath. It wasn't the only wound left on the witcher, though, not by a long shot. There was a cut that curved across the opposite pectoral, shallow but ragged, crusted over with cracking, oozing scabs; old, dark bruises around his stomach and ribs; marks that, when Geralt risked turning him onto his side for a quick moment, touched his ribs but were centered on his shoulders and back, each of them bubbling with infection, the sort of overlapping angry wounds that signified the use of a whip. 

Geralt's lip curled. The witcher's armor hadn't shown any signs of those blows. He'd been stripped, beaten to within an inch of his life, then re-clothed and dragged out here to a lonely, dark forest just to suffer some more so he could finally die. And for what? No matter how much Geralt racked his brain, he couldn't think of any magic that would require this sort of torture.

"Fuck," he muttered to himself. 

He didn't like the idea of this being some magic he didn't know. He liked the idea of this being no magic at all—cruelty for cruelty's sake, someone beating and bruising and tearing apart a witcher just because they could—even less. Either answer meant danger for every last witcher.

Lucky for him, and for the stranger, he'd stocked up before this leg of the trip. Roach's saddlebags were filled with potions and poultices. He rummaged around in them a moment, giving Roach a pat on the haunch as he did, and came out with a few that might give his patient the best chance: golden oriole to cleanse the infection from the bloodstream, swallow to heal his wounds, tawny owl to keep his body from giving out before the wounds _could_ heal, and last but not least white honey, a disinfecting poultice, to spread over the surface of his injuries and fight the infection there.

With those bottles laid out around the man's unconscious body, Geralt paused by the fire. He dug out a smaller blade from his belt—barely even a knife, really, a delicate little thing—and held it over the fire's heat a few minutes before returning to the man's side.

The old scabs would have to come off for healthier ones to form. The swelling pustules would have to burst so the infection could flow freely out of the body. Geralt wasn't looking forward to either of those tasks.

"Well," he sighed, staring down at his fellow witcher's limp form. "Don't suppose you'd wake up for a drink. Be easier than pouring it down your throat."

He didn't expect a response. Geralt was used to being alone, and talking idly to the man's unconscious body came as easily as talking to Roach. But, somehow, _unbelievably_ —

The man's eyelids twitched. His face scrunched up into a half-conscious scowl, a low noise of pain slipping from his throat. His breathing came deeper, quicker—and then, with hardly any warning at all, his eyes opened. They were still the same vibrant golden as before, the pupils that same narrow slit. The other witcher stared up at Geralt, fear and hostility warring for control of his face.

"...Really." Geralt scowled. He should've expected it—what was his kind's legacy, if not stubbornness in the face of everything that ought to kill them?

"You," the stranger rasped, and then, "Ah. Yes. I—you. I remember. I thought that was a dream." His voice was a low, hoarse, animal rasp, barely audible; it was the sound of a man who'd ruined his throat screaming. "I should've known it wasn't. Would've dreamed myself up a parade of beautiful youths to carry me away on their backs." The stranger laughed, low and sly, as his eyes flickered up and down Geralt's body. "No offense meant, of course. I'm sure there'd be a spot for you in the procession, if you wished."

A prickle ran up Geralt's spine. A laughing witcher. A lascivious, grinning witcher, who flirted even on his deathbed, who wore fury and fear equally openly on his face, who'd begged for his life the moment he saw Geralt and had no medallion around his neck...

The last few pieces dropped into place. He'd been a fool not to see it earlier.

 _Damn it_ , he thought, gritting his teeth. This complicated things.

"Don't have to ask what school you're a member of," he said coolly, looking down at his patient.

The stranger's smile grew. If anything, he seemed glad to be found out. "I doubt I have to ask yours either, my friend. Stodgy as you are, with a disapproving glare and a jawline like that... Wolf, aren't you? It's either that or Bear, and if you were Bear you would've left me up there to rot."

He winced with each word, speaking through cracked and bloodied lips, but the pain didn't make him any less determined to speak.

Wordlessly, Geralt reached beneath his and pulled out his medallion: a wolf's head in profile, its fangs bared in a snarl. He held it up for a moment, letting it glimmer in the fire's low light, before tucking it back away.

The stranger chuckled. "Ah, look at me. A proper scholar. I'd show you my own, but"—his tone turned sour in the span of a heartbeat—"I'm afraid I'm without it at the moment. So, what say you? Am I part of your pack, or a thing to be hunted?"

His eyes caught the light, as bright a yellow as any true cat's. In the firelight, his fang-like teeth seemed to glisten red. Geralt met his stare evenly, not missing the challenge there—or the way he was curled in around himself even now, sweat still pouring from his body, his smile tense around the edges from pain he was trying desperately to hide.

The School of the Cat. Every witcher's bane, and the enemies of the School of the Wolf most of all.

Funny, that this was the one possibility he hadn't considered: that perhaps the man in the tree hadn't been put up there as part of some vile ritual or out of a twisted desire for pain, but because he'd done something to cause another to hate him so much. If anyone could manage it, it would be a Cat. Their particular breed of witcher seemed to bring nothing but chaos and death with them.

Vesemir had often wondered aloud to Geralt, back when they worked together, whether the school went looking for violent young brutes specifically or whether it was yet another unfortunate side effect of the alchemic formula they used when creating more of their kind. Either way, the effect was the same: the School of the Cat was a clan of violent, unstable madmen, sociopaths and sadists and gleeful murderers all mixed in together into one seething cauldron of pain and violence. The Wolf School's own Trial of the Grasses—as well with the formula used by any proper witchers' school—worked its way into the emotions of the one it was used on and crippled them, making a witcher who was able to fight without fear of being lost to monstrous desires. The School of the Cat's alchemic formula instead _amplified_ the desires of those who it changed. It birthed witchers who laughed and cried and bore vicious, hateful grudges, who killed based on passing whims and who entertained every lust that mankind had ever thought to invent.

The witchers of the Cat School killed humans as well as monsters. They worked as assassins and sellswords and treacherous concubines, and even having most of their number put to the sword for it by the humans who hired them hadn't dissuaded them from their path. They'd betrayed the School of the Wolf once before, and killed dozens of Geralt's kin in their attempt.

They were pariahs. Lepers among their own kind. And one was laying here in the clearing with Geralt, alone and helpless and afraid, grinning wildly even as his gaze darted back and forth from Geralt's eyes to the delicate knife in his hands. 

Waiting for the blade to come down. Knowing there was nothing he could do stop it. Trying to face death with as much dignity as he could muster.

A true Wolf wouldn't—shouldn't—hesitate.

Geralt sighed, the knot of tension in his stomach digging in tighter, and without fanfare lifted both his hands into the air, a gesture any man who'd ever been on the battlefield would know. _See, look? I'm harmless._

It was a comical thing—the only harmless witcher was a dead witcher—but the symbolism was there.

The stranger eyed him even more intently. His strange, too-open face twisted into a scowl. He seemed more than a little dumbfounded.

"...Really," he said. "Just like that. No revenge on your mind? No duty?"

"Are you trying to convince me to kill you?"

There was that smile again, if for only a moment. "I wouldn't say _that_. More... I'd rather the knife I see coming than the one planted in my back. Especially coming from one of my own kind."

Geralt snorted. "You'll find me less treacherous than your people. And don't get me wrong—you're not _my kind_. I don't kill those who can't fight back. That's all."

"So that's it, then, hm? Not even worth killing? Well"—he barked out a short, sharp laugh, more fox than cat—"I've heard worse directed my way, I suppose. I'm sure I'll appreciate your hospitality."

He wouldn't. This was going to be agony.

"Lean back," Geralt said. "And—you should let me get you a belt. Something to bite down on."

He reached out a hand to try and guide him back onto the ground, but the stranger flinched away from his touch before he could. As his shoulders hit dirt, a shiver of agony ran through his whole body. 

"Yes." A grunt of pain slipped past his lips. "I think I'll accept your offer, thank you."

His voice sounded even more rattled than before.

Geralt glanced away. He still wasn't sure whether he was doing the right thing in this, but at least he could say he wasn't leaving someone to suffer. No matter right or wrong, what this Cat witcher had or hadn't done to deserve this, it would have sat poorly with him to leave someone to succumb to their wounds. Especially someone suffering like this.

A scrap of old armor would do for the task; it was good, thick leather, the kind a person could sink their teeth into. Geralt handed it over to him along with each of the bottles he wanted the man to drink, and the stranger gave the potions a resigned sort of look.

"Before I do this," he said, "just in case I don't—well. Tell me your name, o' brave rescuer of mine?" His words dripped with sarcasm.

Geralt raised an eyebrow. "Are you thinking I poisoned the bottles?"

The stranger chuckled, his amusement somehow unaffected by the way he had to gasp for air between each laugh. "No, not that. Just—there's a lot that can go wrong, having a strange man hack at your wounds with a knife in a muddy clearing in the middle of the forest while you try not to keel over from the pain. Or, who knows—maybe I'm planning to curse you if I die, and come back as a vengeful wraith."

That didn't seem too terrible an option, honestly. At least Geralt could banish _wraiths_ without having to weigh the morality of it.

He didn't want the stranger to know his name. But he deserved it, one witcher to another—and, if this stranger did end up living through this, he'd find it out eventually either way. There weren't exactly many other white-haired Wolf witchers Geralt could be mistaken for, unless he wanted to pass himself off as Vesemir and hope this man was a complete and utter fool.

"Your name first, then," Geralt said. "Only fair."

" _Fair_ , he says," the stranger muttered to the air, "like _he's_ the one with a wound in his chest." Then, to Geralt: "Well, fine, then. But if you renege on your half of the deal, don't think I'll forget it. The name's Avild."

Avild. Redanian name, he was fairly sure. It shouldn't matter, but he filed it away nonetheless, trying not to think too hard about why anything this stranger—this Avild—had to say mattered to him.

He was curious. Nothing more. Not too often he got to talk with other witchers. Even rarer he got to meet a Cat.

"Avild," he said, giving a short nod. "Name's Geralt."

"Geralt," Avild mused, eyes narrowing. "Where have I—wait." His expression lit up. "I've heard of _you_. The Butcher—"

Geralt didn't give Avild time to finish his sentence. He shoved the scrap of leather and the first potion into his hands with a scowl and, harsher than he'd intended, growled out, "Enough talking, unless you want to rot away right here. Drink."

His hands were tight around the bottle. He had to force himself to let go when Avild reached for it.

From the bright, curious look Avild gave him, he wasn't about to forget what he'd realized. "I'm only curious—"

"Lie _down_ ," Geralt snapped, ducking further into Avild's space. 

Avild held his ground a moment, defiant even as his arm shook from the effort of keeping him on his side, but eventually he let himself crumple, panting, back against the grass. "All right, all right, I won't press."

Not while he was about to be at the mercy of Geralt's knife, at least. After... well, after this Geralt might have to pull out some of the bindings he'd used to carry Avild here and see if they could be used to tie a man's mouth shut as well.

Of all the people in the world he wanted asking him about being _The Butcher of Blaviken_ —who he'd be willing to talk to about Renfri and the villagers and everything that happened that day—a man who might actually admire him for what he'd done there was at the bottom of the list.

"Good," was all Geralt said. He already knew better than to give Avild any reaction he might be able to pry further into.

One more curious, piercing look, like he was sizing Geralt up in search of cracks in his armor—and then Avild sighed, said, "Well, you're no fun at all," and tipped the first potion down his throat.

None of them tasted good; Geralt had never thought to complain about that, but Avild griped all the way through choking each of them down. When finally the last bottle was empty—Avild's eyes a little glazed over now, the pain no doubt lessened by the numbing fuzz of the tawny owl's healing—he tossed it to the grass beside him and rolled over fully onto his back.

"All right, Butcher," he sighed. "Time to show me how accurate your name is. Tell me, for my sake, are you sure they didn't mean to name you the Surgeon of Blaviken instead?"

"You always try to pick fights with people who're about to cut you open?"

That got him a grin. "Only when they're as interesting as you."

The flirtatious edge to his words couldn't hide the way his voice shook. Was he pushing Geralt on purpose, preferring certain torture over uncertain hope? Or was this just the madness of the Cat, irrepressible even with Avild on his deathbed— pushing, always pushing, unable to control his emotions even to save his life?

This, Geralt thought dryly, was why witchers weren't supposed to have any. He'd never manage a single hunt if he were like _this_.

Still. He wished—idly, strangely—that he could convince Avild he wasn't a threat. That he really did mean to protect him. Not that could ever manage such a thing when he didn't even understand his reasoning for doing this himself. It was just that there was something about the man: the gleam of mischief in his eyes, the striking grace of his body even when he was too weak to move, the novelty of open emotions flitting across a witcher's face...

Even if he were a Cat—even if he'd done something to deserve this—Geralt couldn't help but think it would be a loss to them all if he died. It was as simple as that.

But comforting words would sound hollow coming from his mouth. "I've skill enough with a blade," Geralt told him instead. "Hold still."

"Have you skill with using a blade for this sort of task? I can't imagine too many people would willingly lie still while you're pointing that at them." But even as Avild got the last jab in, he was fitting the piece of leather between his teeth, biting down hard with a grimace on his face. Ready to face the pain.

Geralt gave an exaggerated shrug. "Striga-hunting, surgery, there can't be too much difference."

A weak, muffled laugh slipped from behind Avild's makeshift gag at that.

He did have a pleasant laugh. A strange thing, for a witcher. Geralt needed to stop bantering with him; it was far too easy a habit to fall into. Geralt shook the unnecessary thoughts from his mind, narrowing his world to only Avild's sweat-soaked body beneath him and the wounds across his chest and the knife in Geralt's hands.

"Get ready," Geralt warned him. 

Avild took a deep, shaking breath, his eyes focused on the knife, as Geralt brought it down onto the first swell of infection.

* * *

As bad as the stench of infection had been before, it only worsened the moment Geralt made the first cut. Avild whined behind his gag, head twitching, as the knife slid through abscessed skin and drew an oozing line of purulent fluid, pus and old blood together, out from the swollen flesh. 

"Nn," Avild grunted. His eyes fell shut a moment and then opened again, catching Geralt's gaze before skittering away.

No time to falter now. Geralt pressed his hands to either side of the cut, lightly pressing down to draw more of the infection out and trying not to wince when it drew another pained moan from Avild. Once there was enough fluid drained that the swelling wasn't so severe, he took the pot of boiling water off of the fire and drew a roll of bandages out from his pack. The cloth wasn't so clean as he'd like, but it would be better than what Avild was suffering through right now. Anything would be.

He wiped the wound clean, first with bandages dipped in the boiling water and then with a smear of the white honey Geralt had uncorked by his side. The poultice had a harsh, pungent smell, a complete contrast to its pleasant name—normally, Geralt hated to use it, but now he spread it on gratefully. Anything was better than the scent of infection and oozing wounds.

Geralt crossed Avild's body like that, with gentle but unflinching focus, stopping for every cut or infected place he found. He broke old scabs to force free the pus and blood and serous fluid trapped beneath, cut through skin so swollen it looked berry-red and stretched as tightly as a ripe tomato's skin, dripped clean water over and smeared white honey onto wounds so fresh that he wanted to wince in sympathy just looking at them.

He didn't bother with stitches. Avild's body would close the wounds fast enough that they'd only be a waste.

As Geralt worked, Avild watched him. The pain on his face was obvious—every flicker of agony showing in his eyes, his brows, the way his jaw flexed around the strip of leather—and the casual confidence he'd worn before this had disappeared entirely. No human could have survived these wounds. Few witchers would have managed it. It was no surprise he was in pain, or that he was afraid. It was only strange to see it so plainly.

Geralt made his way down Avild's back, cleaning each angry red lash as he went, until finally he'd reached the limits of what he could see. There were still more wounds, though; one particularly vicious whip-mark, weeping infection, crossed beneath the line of Avild's trousers and disappeared. 

For a moment Geralt let himself imagine what must have happened to cause these marks. It was becoming more and more obvious to him that the wounds weren't _new_. No infection spread this quickly, especially not when a witcher was the one infected. And, more than that, few of them seemed to be the same age. Old, yellowing bruises bloomed side by side next to fresh dark swollen ones, open bleeding cuts overlapped with scabbed and oozing wounds, lash marks crossed every inch of his body in a way that couldn't be the result of single attack.

Avild's captors must have stripped him naked, beat him and left the wounds to fester—and then dragged him out of wherever they were holding him and done it again. And again, and again, before finally dressing him in his armor once more and dragging him out to the woods for a final moment of torture. 

Geralt growled under his breath. Whoever did this—

"I need to take these off," he said, cutting his own thoughts off to focus instead on Avild. He tugged at the bloodstained trousers with two fingers.

He didn't even get a teasing look for that. Avild just looked... tired. Maybe afraid. He shook his head desperately, groaning a muffled _No_ into the leather strip.

"They won't heal otherwise."

Another, firmer, shake of the head.

Geralt growled under his breath. He could hold him down while he cut them off, if it came to that, but he'd prefer not to. He didn't like the idea of violating the fragile trust between them so thoroughly. And he was every bit as loathe to avoid the wounds entirely; he hadn't gone to all this trouble just to watch Avild die from infection.

From the look on Avild's face, though, he had a sinking feeling he knew where the hesitation was coming from. Geralt took a stab in the dark.

"I won't judge," he said.

Avild muttered a few words around the leather. Geralt couldn't make out the words, but he'd bet every coin he had that it was something not suitable to repeat around children.

"You think I have any room to?" he continued on. "Things happen on hunts sometimes. They're not... clean work."

That got him a sharp, piercing glare. Geralt held Avild's stare and returned it. He knew it wasn't the same—a Cat's hunts ended up in a nobleman's bed as often as in a monster's lair, if the stories Vesemir told were true—but he wasn't going to condemn. Not now, at least, not when Avild were already looking up at him with the wild fear of a cornered animal in his eyes.

Finally, Avild dropped his gaze. He sighed and pulled free the strip of leather in his mouth just long enough to say, stiffly, "Fine. But no comments from you, all right?"

"I'll try my best," Geralt said dryly. 

The trousers came off easily enough once he took the blade to them, peeling away in thick strips of leather crusted with blood. Underneath was—well, more blood, for one. Deep, jagged cuts, marks from a whip. And, interspersed with it all, heavy bruises on Avild's hips and inner thighs. Some of them were in the shape of hands.

Geralt didn't say anything. It wasn't anything he hadn't expected. Sometimes a hunt didn't go well. Being a witcher meant enduring all kinds of attacks.

But he let his hand rest a moment on Avild's shoulder before continuing, hoping it made for some kind of reassurance.

The rest of the cleaning went much the same as before; by the end of it, Geralt was scraping the edges of his final jar of white honey, trying to get just enough to patch over the last of the wounds. The bandages were dark reddish-brown, the water'd been dumped out and re-collected at least three times, and Geralt was covered in sweat, his muscles aching from the stress of it like he'd just fought a pair of griffins without his sword instead of bandaging a wounded man.

Avild looked healthier, at least. By the firelight, Geralt could see a hint of color in his cheeks that hadn't been there before, and the heavy stench of rot was coming from the cloth scraps now instead of his flesh. The exhaustion, though, had to be hitting him far harder now without adrenaline to keep him going—Geralt watched his eyelids flicker as he struggled to stay awake. 

"We've done enough for now," Geralt said. "You might live."

He'd have to see a proper healer eventually. There were diseases that could creep into a man's blood when they were wounded like that, diseases Geralt couldn't check for. But at least now he wouldn't bleed out before he could find one.

Avild spat the strip of leather onto the ground. It was nearly chewed in half from the force of his bite. "How reassuring. Have you ever thought to take up a career as a healer? Your bedside manner's impeccable."

"Hm," Geralt said blandly. If he was feeling well enough to be a smartass, that was a good sign. 

Avild seemed annoyed Geralt wasn't rising to the bait. It made it even more satisfying to ignore the constant stream of quips and barbs.

When Geralt stood, Avild's eyes tracked him nervously. "Where to now?"

"My horse," Geralt said, and then, realizing the source of his wariness: "You're not getting rid of me that easily. I want to sleep."

He probably shouldn't be all right with the relief that flickered across Avild's face at his words. For a Cat to get attached to him was one thing—that's what they _were_ , after all, what the formulation of their witcher biology did to them. Too emotional by half, prone to ferocious rage and desperate gratitude and everything in between. But Geralt was made differently, and he had no intention of getting caught up in this longer than he needed to. 

Geralt said nothing. When he pulled his bedroll from off Roach's back, he brought an extra set of clothing with it. Simple cloth rather than armor, patched in a dozen places and stained in a dozen more, but it would do.

"Here," he said, throwing them at Avild. Avild caught them, startled, as Geralt knelt down to unroll his bed.

"What are—ah," he said, holding them up to the firelight. "This is... I don't need these."

Geralt raised an eyebrow, glad Avild couldn't see his face from this angle. "You're not sleeping naked beside me."

"...Ah." From the sound of his voice, Avild hadn't realized sleeping beside Geralt had been an option at all. Did Cat witchers never bed down together? He would've thought they'd be more likely to take to it, if anything. "That's not necessary either. I'm a witcher, not some fainting nobleman."

The puncture wound clear through his shoulder was evidence of that enough. Geralt sighed. "You're not sleeping on the ground, either. I won't have my work ruined that way."

Avild scowled. His tongue swiped nervously over his teeth. "I can wear my old clothes, then—"

The scraps of the trousers weren't far from where Geralt was kneeling. He picked one of them up and held it—the thin strip barely a few inches wide, smeared with so much of Avild's blood that it reeked even now—and stared wordlessly at Avild.

A muscle in Avild's jaw clenched. He scowled at Geralt a moment longer, his face tense with some unreadable emotion, and then in a furious rush he said, "How do you want me to pay you back?"

Ah. Was _that_ what this was about? He'd wondered why he was acting so strange, why easy demands had given over to stubbornness so suddenly.

"You don't owe me anything," Geralt said.

"Bullshit."

"The clothes you're holding were worth about three copper brand new. I'll survive without them."

"And the white honey? The swallow? The tawny owl? I'm not a fool, Geralt. I know the treatment wasn't without cost."

"I have coin."

"That makes one of us, then!" Avild's face was twisted in frustration, red with shame.

Fuck, Geralt thought. This was why he preferred being alone. Roach would never give him such a headache as this.

It was tiresome, having to haggle with people who had no means to pay him. Far more tiresome than simply accepting a loss once in a while. This land was cruel to everyone, and Geralt was better able to bear it than most. He'd thought another witcher would understand that—though, perhaps Avild wasn't the sort of witcher to be flexible on payment when it was people owing him any more than when he was the one doing the owing.

Funny, how it was never the ones with money to spare who were desperate to pay Geralt what he was due.

"Look," Geralt said, awkwardly, "we can discuss this tomorrow. I'm not in the mood now."

Tomorrow he could ride off on Roach before Avild had a chance to catch up. Couldn't ask for an easier solution than that.

That, finally, seemed to mollify Avild. He sighed, the anger in his face becoming exhaustion once more, and began to slip Geralt's old clothes over his head. They looked comical on him; he wasn't a small man by any means, but he was leaner, more angled, with a Cat's whip-like build. The shirt's collar fell low enough to show not just his collarbone but the dip in his chest between his pectoral muscles.

"You're a hard one to deal with, aren't you?" he asked, a hint of a laugh in his voice. "Are all Wolves so stubborn as you, or did I just happen across the most ornery of your breed?"

Geralt didn't feel like dignifying that with a response. His absentminded _hmm_ only made Avild laugh more.

When Geralt laid down on his bedroll, Avild hesitated. Geralt patted the side of it closest to Avild. "Don't tell me you're getting cold feet now."

"Been a while since I shared a bed, that's all."

Geralt raised an eyebrow.

With a tilt of his head that said, _all right, fair_ , Avild amended, "Well, a while since I did it without being paid."

That did seem more likely.

Still. Geralt kept silent, unmoving, and after a few seconds that felt like hours Avild huffed out a sigh and crawled over next to him on the bedroll.

"You're not much fun to play with, you know that?" he muttered, but before Geralt could even consider whether he wanted to reply to that, Avild's head fell back against the bedroll and he was asleep.

His breathing was labored, but steadier than it had been. His eyelids twitched occasionally and his mouth curved into a hint of a frown. Geralt watched him as he slept, wondering: who Avild was, what he'd been doing, how he'd been caught. Whether Geralt had made the right choice in saving him.

Between the people who were likely going to be pursuing them and the Cat witcher who still could decide to put a knife in Geralt's back at any moment, he didn't expect to sleep much tonight. But the meditation he was aiming for slowly became harder and harder to keep up; his breathing too slow and too deep, his eyelids heavier and heavier, and before Geralt knew it he was falling himself.

* * *

It wasn't the early morning sunlight that woke him, or the sound of Roach tossing her head as she grazed from the new growth alongside the riverbank. Geralt had long since learned to tune out those sounds while he was on the road. No, it was something else that pestered him awake: breathing that was too heavy and too close, a warm solid weight pressed against his hip and back, unfamiliar skin against him—

Geralt threw himself upright, grasping blindly for his sword, his mind screaming _monster!_

One breath. Two breaths. His heart pounding wildly in his chest. Memory flooded back as he caught sight of Avild blinking sleepily up at him, his body molded to Geralt's side in a skillful impression of his namesake.

"Mmm," Avild said. His voice was rough with sleep, an animal's growl. "I have to say, I'm even more confused about your sleeping habits now. Do you normally wake up like that when you're sharing a bed with someone else?"

Avild's hair was sticking in a dozen different directions. One of his arms was still loosely wrapped around Geralt's hip, and both his legs were tangled together with Geralt's. He blinked at him, his golden eyes gleaming with mischief, and a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.

Geralt wanted to groan. Apparently sleep was all Avild needed to get back his bravado. If he'd known that, he would've made them have their conversation last night after all.

"Not normally," he answered brusquely, getting to work untangling his body from Avild's. 

Normally he was able to wake himself more quietly. His every sense felt strained and over-aware; it had been a long time since he'd slept so easily through the night, and waking from it was disorienting.

"Well, then. I'm glad to be unique, then. What an honor." 

Avild stretched, wincing as he did. Geralt could see a dozen new stains across the clothes he'd let Avild borrow, each of them the same brownish-red. Less blood then he'd expected overnight. A good sign. And, then, a better one—as Geralt watched, Avild braced himself against the ground and pushed himself into a sitting position.

"Fuck," he huffed. "I feel woozy even from that."

"I'm surprised you managed it."

Avild snorted. "I'm going to have to manage more than that soon."

"So there is someone coming after you, then." Geralt narrowed his eyes at Avild, watching carefully, ready to pull any hint he could from the witcher's uncomfortably easy-to-read face.

"After _me_?" Avild laughed. "No, not as such. I expect they think I'm dead. I need to go after _them_."

Geralt closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Avild was still staring up at him with that same viciously defiant expression on his face.

"...Explain," he said.

With a scowl, Avild said, "Those fuckers used me. For some ritual of theirs. They needed a sacrifice, they said. Of monster and man, intertwined in one flesh. I guess our kind works well enough for that, hm?" His laugh was bitter and sharp.

"True enough," Geralt said. And that story matched with what he'd guessed himself—that impalement had to be part of some strange ritual. But it explained nothing else of what he wanted to know. "Who are _they_? How did they overpower you?"

"Ah." Avild winced. "I suppose... you do deserve to know, don't you? It's the least I can do."

At the look on Avild's face—fear and shame and embarrassment all wrapped together in one—Geralt held up a hand.

"Wait. These people, do you think they'll show up here in the next hour?"

"...Not unless you know something I don't, why?"

Geralt nodded. "In that case, we're eating first."

There were few things in life he wanted to do less than listen to this on an empty stomach. Fistfight a wraith, maybe. Eat raw drowner. 

Hell, even the drowner sounded more appealing than going hungry right now.

* * *

Over a breakfast of boiled mash and dried jerky—parceled out equally between Avild and Geralt, over Avild's protests, because if Geralt was going to use his medical supplies on this man then letting him starve to death after would just be pointless—Avild explained how he'd ended up in the tree. His hands moved as he talked, animated enough to match the wild expressions that passed across his face, sometimes so emphatically that Geralt had to stop him before he spilled his bowl.

It was a sight to see. In more ways than one.

"So," Avild started, waving the simple wooden spoon Geralt had given him like a conductor's baton, "it all started a few weeks ago. Perhaps more, my sense of the days passing isn't exactly at its best after being locked underground. I was called for by a nobleman living not too far down this road who claimed to need a witcher's expertise."

"Was there really a monster?" Geralt asked. "Or was it a trap?"

It was easier to hold a conversation when it was a hunt he was talking about. It gave everything focus, guided Geralt's tongue.

"...Ah," Avild said. He gave Geralt a dazzling, slightly embarrassed grin. "Not that sort of witcher hunt, I'm afraid. He was looking for a Cat."

" _Ah_ ," Geralt said, matching Avild's tone more perfectly than he wanted to.

A task for a Cat. Assassination, then, and not of a drowner or malevolent vampire. Avild had come here to end a human's life. 

Again, Geralt couldn't help but wonder exactly what he'd done when he chose to rescue Avild.

"Though in the end I do suspect it was a trap," Avild continued on, "so perhaps he would've tailored his request differently if it were someone like you who'd come along instead."

"Maybe."

Avild shrugged. "Regardless, he brought me to his home—a mansion in the woods, not too far from here. He told me I could start the next day, then wined me and dined me, got me good and drunk..."

"And you believed him?"

 _Let your guard down?_ he didn't add, but he was sure Avild could hear the reproach in his voice.

"In my defense, his story was very convincing. If I had someone come to kill the only person standing in the way of my receiving a thousand-crown inheritance, I would've done everything I could to keep them happy too."

It wasn't that Geralt had never killed humans before. He'd struck down more than he could count, more than he cared to remember. But he wasn't a hired thug, or a tame blade to be used in petty power squabbles. Witchers were meant to exist outside of the arguments of kingdoms and royalty; they were meant to protect all of humanity, in whatever form they found it, wherever it might be necessary.

Except Cats. Except this man. And Avild knew it, so—

Geralt stared at Avild, eyes narrowed.

"Why are you doing that?" he asked.

"Doing what?"

"Bringing up details of the assassination. Like you're trying to antagonize me. You're not stupid, and I don't think you're trying to get yourself killed, so—why?"

"Huh!" Avild said, half in disbelief. "I have underestimated you, haven't I, Wolf? And here I thought I was being so clever."

Geralt just frowned at him, crossed his arms, and waited.

"...Well," Avild said finally, "if you must know, it's nothing nefarious. You're fascinating, is all."

Geralt scowled even more intently and kept waiting.

"I'm serious! I'm sure you've heard stories enough about us, up in your ancient crumbling fortress, but—we have stories too, you know." He grimaced, pain of a different sort flashing across his face. "Well. Had. We had..." Avild shook his head. "No. The point is, we Cats hear stories about your kind too. The famed Wolves, so loyal to the ideals of a witcher, so obsessed with fulfilling their duty, that they stick their recruits with formula that sucks out every last hint of emotion and leaves its school full of unfeeling, sword-swinging husks."

Husks wasn't the right word—or, at least, it wasn't the word Geralt would've used for himself—but the rest...

"Did your school really think so poorly of being what a witcher's supposed to be?"

"Of being emotionless? Cold, cut-off, thinking of nothing but the next mission? Of course!" Avild scoffed. "But that's not what you are, is it? You rescued me. You wasted your own medicine, your clothes, your food on me. And"—he leaned in closer, his eyes gleaming bright—"every time I talk about committing an assassination, you get a little twitch in your jaw. Like you want to drop your food and strangle me instead. It's absolutely fascinating."

Geralt pressed a hand to his jaw. "I don't," he said, and immediately regretted it. 

There could be no point in arguing with a Cat on a matter like this. Avild would see things where he wanted to and invent whatever signals he pleased.

"You do, though! It's consistent. As consistent as the stars at night. It makes me wonder what you Wolves are made of underneath all the..." He waved a hand at Geralt, nearly spilling his meal again in his attempt to sum him up. "You know, the armor. All sorts of it."

"Meat, mostly," Geralt said. "Some bone."

"Mm-hmm. Nothing else, I'm sure. And certainly nothing so Catlike as rage. Or sorrow. Or panic."

"I can feel what I need to feel," Geralt said.

"You feel more than you want to admit. You just push it down, tell yourself it's your nature."

Of course Geralt wasn't completely emotionless. They'd be useless as witchers if they were; cold logic could only carry one so far. But—his feelings weren't as strong as a human's. Or a Cat's, for that measure. It was by design, written into his soul by the Trial of the Grasses. It was what had let him survive this long, what let him see the faces of the dead in his dreams each night without waking with a throat hoarse from screaming in the morning.

And if that meant there were some things he couldn't feel as strongly, that was fine. The numbness was a welcome companion. He couldn't remember a time before it.

He didn't need anyone prying into that. Least of all Avild.

"Enough," Geralt said, his voice nearly a snarl.

Avild leaned back immediately, his hands held up in a gesture of surrender. "Fine, fine, I didn't mean to—"

That'd been more vicious than he intended. Geralt cleared his throat. Tried again. "Just... keep going with your story. _Without_ the extra details this time."

"All right," Avild said, his voice still too low and too cautious by half, but he did continue. "Anyhow, where was—ah, my client. He gave me wine until I was senseless, and then I woke up, well... elsewhere. In significantly less-pleasant quarters, shall I say."

"The dungeon."

"Exactly! Or, some sort of cell, at least. I think calling it a dungeon would have been far too generous. There was"—Avild glanced away, his face darkening with the memory of pain—"well, let's just say there was enough they wanted to do to me to keep us busy for the weeks that I lost. You saw the scars."

Yes. He had. "Did they say why?"

Avild shook his head. "Not exactly. There was a, a—circle of some sort. Mage handiwork. Carved into the wall. If you give me a stick I could draw it in the mud."

Lucky for them there was a stream right beside them. Geralt went fishing for one and came up with a decent-sized twig.

The sygil wasn't complex. It didn't take Avild more than a few minutes to draw it. When he leaned back, letting Geralt see what he'd made, Geralt cursed.

 _Fuck_. That was... worse than he'd hoped for. Worse than he'd thought to expect.

He recognized the design: a simple half-circle, interspersed with jagged runes: sweeping symbols shaped like a hawk's talon, an inverted chalice, a skull. Not something he'd ever seen in person. But the stories were enough.

"Necromancy," he said. "They're summoning something big."

"Necromancy? Who do they want to talk to so badly, all the way out here? Can't imagine the corpses of the birds make for too much company."

"Not to talk," Geralt said. He closed his eyes a moment, thinking back to the stories Vesemir had once told him and the books he'd scoured through whenever he had a spare moment. He was no mage, but their records were easier to follow than most. He was sure he'd seen that skull before, and if the claw wasn't a hawk's talon but a griffin's...

Kaer Morhen was to the north. Days away. But a spell like this could be stored, once the sacrifice was made. Cast somewhere else.

No wonder they'd needed a witcher's blood.

Geralt opened his eyes. "They were planning to summon witcher corpses. With that spell, they could bind them. Keep them forced to follow their will."

" _What_?" Avild asked. 

"It's—complicated. I can't explain how I know. But I think they must be going for the dead of the Wolves. Up in Kaer Morhen."

Unbidden, his hand found its way up to his collar, to clutch at the medallion there. He traced the wolf's head, imagining it: his fellows pulled from the peace of death, forced to suffer. 

Geralt followed no gods. But he gave thanks in that moment to whatever might be able to hear him that he had found Avild in time to save him.

"It won't work, though," he continued. "Not with you alive."

They'd go to the north, to ancient grounds... would they find Vesemir there, this time of year, or would he be off on a hunt? If he were there, he'd certainly cut the men down, and if not... Geralt frowned. 

If not...

"Shit," he said.

"I know stoicism is your school's favorite trait, but if you could give me a _little_ insight into your thoughts here?" Avild said acridly.

"I don't know what it'll do," Geralt admitted. "With you alive, it won't go as planned, but..."

"Necromancy," Avild finished, understanding.

The would-be necromancers might end up with a fizzled-out, useless spell. They might end up killing themselves, the blood drained from their body or their skin turning to dust or any of a hundred other ways Geralt had heard of overconfident mages dying. Or they might end up summoning the Wolf's dead, but find themselves unable to control them: a mass of dozens of witchers, maybe hundreds, screaming in pain inside their rotting husks, wild and uncontrollable and unpredictable in death.

No. He couldn't let that happen. No matter how slim the chance might be, it wasn't worth the risk.

"I'll find them," Geralt decided. If he started north now, he should be able to catch them before they arrived at Kaer Morhen.

"I'm coming with you."

For a moment, Geralt could only blink at him. Just the idea of it—

"No," he said. Absolutely not.

"It's not a question. I'm coming with you." Avild's jaw clenched. 

Where was this coming from? Geralt scowled. They'd known each other for barely half a day, and already Avild had an impressive talent for always insisting on the worst possible course of action.

"You think you can keep up? You have a _hole_ in you."

The stubborn look on Avild's face only grew. "I'm a witcher too, Wolf. It'll heal."

"Not quickly enough to be ready to ride." Not that Roach could carry Avild all that distance, even if he were healthy; one full grown witcher was enough for her. Geralt sighed and rubbed tiredly at his face. "I'm going. You can come with me as far as the next town, or you can stay here. Your choice."

He grabbed his bedroll off the soft ground, tugging the corner of it out from under Avild, and began to roll it up. He'd have to pack up his few utensils too, and get Roach ready to ride again, but all in all it wouldn't take long before he could be out on the road again. North, this time, to the home he'd long since left—

Avild snarled. He pushed himself off of the ground, forcing himself upright. It was clumsy, unbalanced, and his face took on an unpleasant ashy undertone as he tried it; still, he was undoubtedly standing. An impressive recovery time, even for a witcher. It would have been more impressive if Geralt weren't distracted by the thought of how many half-healed wounds he had to be ripping open like this.

His eyes caught Geralt's as he took an unsteady step forward. 

"And if I slit my throat the moment you're gone?" he asked, his voice dripping with venom. "How will that spell you're so worried about work out then, hm?"

At first Geralt was certain he'd misheard. Of course no one would do something so utterly stupid, so self-destructive and useless... but his hearing was better than a mistake like that. And Avild, when Geralt stared him down, only glared back defiantly.

So. Someone out there existed who _would_ be that stupid. And Geralt'd had the good fortune to meet him.

"You'd kill yourself to spite me," Geralt said, too dumbfounded by the sudden stupidity to even make it a question. 

Perhaps this was the true problem with Cat witchers: a compulsive need to be contrary, even if it led to their own death. _Especially_ if it led to their own death.

Avild glanced away. "It's not revenge. Or—it's not just revenge. I wouldn't expect you to understand."

Geralt already didn't understand. Mostly because Avild was acting like a madman.

"Try me," he said.

One of Avild's hands came up to rest at the hollow of his neck, fingers circling the skin there like he might try to strangle himself. "They have my medallion."

"...Ah." Geralt scowled. 

Hm. Fuck.

The problem was that he did understand. More than he cared to. Geralt had noticed the pendant's absence around Avild's neck before, but he hadn't really _noticed_ it; it had been just another bit of cruelty on a body subjected to a whole list of them, one more wound for Geralt to catalogue. 

But wounds healed. Bones grew back together, bleeding stopped, bruises faded. A lost medallion stayed lost. And the School of the Cat was even more decimated than the School of the Wolf: no home left to them, no leadership, nothing for them to do but follow a ragtag caravan in hope of eking out survival from one moment to the next, killing anything they could get money for killing. There might genuinely not be a Cat witcher left alive who could create a new medallion for Avild.

The Wolves had it easier, in a way. They all knew they were dying out. And defeat was less painful than blind, foolish hope.

Avild took a step closer. He was still staring at Geralt.

"Maybe I was wrong," he said, the rage in his voice given over to something softer. "I see that look in your eyes. You do understand, Geralt, don't you? You know why I need this. I wouldn't ask if it weren't important, but—they took it for a reason. They want it for some part of their spell. Same as my blood. That medallion's been mine for eighty years, nearly, and I'm not letting them defile it. I _can't_."

Fuck. _Fuck_. Trying to take a wounded man with him—even a witcher, even someone who'd heal quickly—would mean losing most of the advantage Geralt would otherwise have over the men he was pursuing. He couldn't ride half so far or half so fast with Avild beside him.

Would he get there in time if he agreed? Could he call himself a witcher if he turned Avild down? The living and the dead were warring for Geralt's loyalty: the corpses buried or burned up at Kaer Morhen, Avild starting at him now with that quietly determined look on his face.

"...Come with me to the next town," he said finally. Reluctantly. "See how much you're healed by the time we get there."

He meant it to be neither a yes nor a no. But he could tell even as he said it that he was giving in—and, from the grateful smile that spread over Avild's face, he wasn't the only one who could.

* * *

"You are _not_ ," Geralt hissed, "stealing a horse."

"Ah, Geralt, you're absolutely right. I intend to _borrow_ a horse. It might turn up again at its master's house someday, fates willing."

Geralt grabbed Avild's shoulder. If not for the wounds there, he would've dug his nails in deep. "No."

Avild scowled at him, golden eyes narrowing. The two of them were on the outskirts of a small town, huddled on the side of its one winding dirt road with dusk quickly falling. They hadn't been seen yet by any of the locals, but it was only a matter of time—and if there was anything these people might find more suspicious than two haggard witchers muttering to each other while glaring at one of their farmhouses, Geralt couldn't imagine it.

He didn't like the idea of being run out of town. It would only slow them down more, and he didn't trust Avild not to try and kill anyone if it came to that.

"If you have another idea, I'm all ears," Avild hissed back, glancing back and forth between Geralt and the horse grazing in the fields closest to them.

 _You could stay here_ , Geralt wanted to say, but—no. Stupid as it was, he'd already lost that fight; they both knew he wasn't going to try and send Avild away now. Instead, he dug through his pack a moment and came up clutching a small leather pouch.

"Here. Try this instead." He pressed the pouch into Avild's hands.

Avild shook it. At the telltale jingle of coins, the anger on his face grew. "What is _this_?"

Geralt raised an eyebrow. "I doubt you've never heard of money before."

"You... _gods_. You trying on a sense of humor is worse than when you're being humorless, you know that? No wonder no one likes the Wolves."

Rich, coming from a Cat. Geralt didn't bother dignifying that with a response.

When Avild realized he wasn't about to get a reaction, he tried to toss the bag back. Geralt grabbed it, threw it back Avild's way, and let it drop to the ground beside his feet when Avild refused to catch it.

"Use it or don't come," Geralt said. "It's not my business which you choose."

It should be, really—he'd make better time without an injured man on a farmer's nag trying to keep pace with him. But some instinct-driven part of him, completely separated from all higher reasoning, shied away from leaving Avild behind. So he was at an impasse even with himself.

There wasn't any sense in it. Avild was reckless, ill-tempered, more likely to get them both killed than help him on his quest. And Geralt wasn't someone who needed company for company's sake; he'd long ago become used to being alone. Roach was all the companionship he needed. 

It was something in his smile, maybe, or something about his quick, mercurial mood. He was fascinating and aggravating in equal measure to try and predict, and the way he smiled when Geralt said something he hadn't been expecting—

Well. No matter. Geralt had more important things to consider right now. Like, for example, Avild choosing to be a thorn in his side.

"Not your business?" Avild asked. "And yet you're preventing me from doing it _my_ way?"

"If your way's the petty thief's way, then yes. It's not your money. You've no reason to be stubborn about this."

Avild looked away. "That's exactly why. Do you know how many times I've been shortchanged on a hunt? How often I walk away with my clothes stained with blood and my pockets empty, after being promised a king's ransom from the people who were all too willing to pay when their lives were in danger?" He snorted, shook his head. "What am I asking? Of course you do. You probably get it more often than I, charmer that you are."

"Don't see what that has to do with any of this," Geralt said.

"These people _owe_ me. All of them do. You... I already owe you enough. I don't want to owe you more."

Geralt sighed. Funny how Avild could pick the strangest lines of logic and follow them with all the stubborn persistence of a scent hound. 

And yet, once again he understood where the man was coming from. More than he'd like to, even. It was... tempting, almost, to believe he was owed something. That one could correct the world's injustices against their kind by stealing a horse.

"This family's barely going to make it through the winter as it is." Geralt gestured towards the fields and their scraggly crop. "They're not the ones who undercharged you. Pay them." He picked the satchel up, pressed it back into Avild's hand. "It's not anything you owe me if I'm the one telling you to do it."

"...Well," Avild said. He eyed Geralt a moment longer. "You are a soft touch all around, aren't you? Never would have guessed."

"Sorry to disappoint," Geralt said dryly.

"It's not a disappointment. I find it charming." There was a softness to his that made him sound almost genuine—and then he added, teasingly, "Of course, I always find it charming when people give me coin for doing nothing. Feel free to charm me as much as you'd like."

"Keep talking and I will want repaid."

And that, thankfully, finally got Avild's silence.

Avild went alone to the farmer's house while Geralt led Roach into the shadowed woods alongside the road; one witcher was less intimidating than two. He stayed there about ten minutes, watching from a distance as Avild spoke animatedly to a haggard-looking woman in the entrance of the rickety house, before she nodded and motioned Avild around to her paddock.

A few more minutes, and then Avild rode Geralt's way on back of one of the sorrier-looking horses he'd ever seen. Sway-backed, knock-kneed, with a saddle that was little more than a few scraps of leather strapped onto the horse's back, the mare made Geralt gladder than ever to have Roach.

"You know," Avild said, giving his new steed a pat, "I think I might call her Stygga. Puts your mare to shame, doesn't she?"

Geralt knew he was doing it to needle him. It didn't stop him from wheeling Roach around and resolving to set a pace that would quickly prove her superiority.

"Wait!" Avild called out, a hint of laughter in his voice, before Geralt could start off. "Before we start—here."

Geralt caught the pouch on sheer instinct. His own, returned back to him. Geralt tensed—had Avild managed to rob the farmers after all? But no, it was lighter than before. A quick glance inside showed a little less than a quarter of his money left.

"I didn't think they'd take so little," Geralt admitted, tucking it back away.

"Ah, well, what brave citizen wouldn't want to to do their part in hunting down a monster lurking in their own woods? Especially one that's killed so many children already. Anyone would be able to summon up a little generosity in their heart in these circumstances."

"Ah," Geralt said. "So you're not stealing from the poor, you're just defrauding them. Much better."

"That's hardly"—Avild started, affronted, only to stop when he caught sight of the half-grin on Geralt's face. "Fuck. That's how it is, then? Didn't realize you had it in you to tease like that."

"There's a lot you don't know. Keep up, you might learn."

"Is that a challenge?" Avild asked, but Geralt couldn't hear what might have followed that—he was already leading Roach onward, following the road to the north, taking advantage of the last little bit of light they had.

A few times, as they rode, Geralt found his thoughts drifting to the money purse tucked away at his side. Avild hadn't needed to give it back. Geralt would have never known if he chose to keep it. And yet.

Maybe he'd thought it would be funny to take Geralt by surprise. Or maybe Geralt wasn't the only soft touch here.

* * *

They spent the better part of the next four days riding. North, always north, diverting only from the compass needle when the forest grew too thick and deep—or, as they drew closer, the mountain passes around them too narrow—to allow a straight path. 

Stygga was a surprisingly stubborn horse, living more up to her name than her origins as a farmer's plow-puller. She wasn't as fast as Roach, or as hardy, and they had to take breaks more often than if Geralt had been riding alone, but they stopped far less often than Geralt had expected they'd need to. 

Her rider shared her stubbornness, though, and that was a problem.

Avild's face grew waner and more drawn each day, his words rarer. He was the first one urging them up in the early morning light, and refused to suggest a rest no matter how long Geralt had them ride. Geralt knew the force of Avild's motivation—the desperate desire to not let oneself be a burden, to keep up no matter what it took—and he knew there was nothing he could say to urge Avild to take care of himself. Not when there was so much at stake for the both of them in this. 

All the same, he worried over him.

In the end, he found a compromise of sorts: when the horses needed rest, or when night had well and truly fallen and they could no longer ride safely, he'd sit Avild down beside their packs and—lacking fire, using his witcher's sight to guide him—tend to Avild's wounds. They were healing, still, a tribute to the power of a witcher's body, but far more slowly than they should have been. Every day of riding meant more delicate scabs broken open, more blood loss, more time his body had to spend repairing damage it had already tried to repair. And the puncture wound was worst of all—the flesh had healed shut, but only tenderly, and by the morning of the third day Avild had begun favoring that arm so obviously that Geralt couldn't help but notice.

He hoped he was helping. Avild complained when Geralt treated the wounds with what few tinctures he had left— _come now, I don't need your babying_ —but he seemed to look forward to it all the same. He leaned into Geralt's touch when Geralt stroked his hands along the wounds, and once or twice he'd nearly fallen asleep while leaning against him.

It made sense. Anyone would appreciate having their pain treated. What made less sense was that Geralt enjoyed it too—he looked forward to each break, not for the chance to stretch his legs but for the chance to touch Avild once more. He'd never enjoyed another's company like this before; normally, more than a day's travel alongside a stranger had him begging for the solitude of his sword and his horse and a forest around him once more. 

Avild was different. Geralt wasn't quite sure why. And there wasn't much time to think about it, either, with Kaer Morhen drawing closer and closer each day they rode, Geralt's thoughts growing grimmer and grimmer each day to match.

Kaer Morhen hadn't been his home for more than fifty years. He still didn't want these interlopers stepping a single foot inside of it. And the longer it took him and Avild, the worst their odds got.

It was Avild who saw it first, on the morning of the fifth day. Geralt had been so focused on nothing but riding, on guiding Roach up the hilly path in front of her, that looking up didn't even occur to him.

"Geralt!" he called out, raising his good hand towards the peaks above, "is that your place there?"

Geralt looked up.

The great keep, built from stones the same shade of grey as the mountain it was nestled against, loomed large in the distance, its parapets half-visible through the light morning fog. Geralt's thoughts fled his head at the sight, too overwhelmed by the mass of memories all flooding back to him at once: the massive halls, dotted everywhere with ramshackle beds that the young recruits would curl up together in; the winding dungeons beneath and rooms high above; playing in the lakes and woods nearby or training until he bled in the grounds next to the keep.

"Yeah," Geralt said. "Yeah, that's the place."

It had been home, once. Now it was a grave, attended to only by Vesemir—and perhaps being invaded by witcher-murdering necromancers as they spoke.

They were half a day's travel away. Maybe less, if they picked their path carefully. They could still beat them—

It was too far away for Geralt to hear the explosion. But he could imagine the sound.

As he watched, a distant point on the grounds of Kaer Morhen exploded into a massive pillar of white light, billowing with energy, so tall it dwarfed even the keep's highest tower. One second, two seconds, three seconds of pulsing waves of energy, so forceful-looking that Geralt could imagine vividly what it would be like to stand next to it: the distant windows exploding in a shower of glass, the stone walls crumbling, the ground shaking beneath his feet as wild screaming magic tried to devour everything around it.

Another second and the pulsating glow sputtered and disappeared, leaving black spots in Geralt's vision that he had to blink away.

So they hadn't beaten Avild's attackers here.

"Shit," Avild said, his voice loud in the sudden echoing quiet.

There was nothing Geralt could say that would be strong enough. He swallowed, said, "Come on, let's go," and spurred Roach onward into a desperate pace, fast enough to match the panicked beating of his heart beneath his ribs.

* * *

He didn't know exactly how long it took them to reach Kaer Morhen after that, but it was less than half a day. Roach was breathing hard, her flanks soaked with sweat—Geralt muttered a quiet apology as he slid off her back at the entrance to the courtyard. She deserved a proper cool down, especially now, but that would have to wait until after he struck down whatever might be waiting for him here. There was a pond nearby, a dip in the stones overgrown and fed by rainwater, so at least she'd have something to cool off in.

Avild was somewhere behind him. Geralt couldn't guess how far back. He only knew that Stygga had fallen further and further behind him as he urged Roach on, and that he'd ignored Avild when he tried to call out to him.

He'd waited before. He couldn't wait on this.

Geralt drew his sword as he approached. No point in going inside, unless he wanted to lose himself in old memories even more—he had a feeling he knew exactly where that pulse of magic had originated from, and it wasn't any part of the castle. Instead, he followed the keep's outer wall around past the training grounds and to a little plot of land choked by weeds and cloaked in near-perpetual shadow thanks to the parapetsoverhead. Stones dotted the field in even intervals, marking its purpose.

It wasn't exactly a graveyard. Witchers tended to die afield, in strange, faraway places, and the ones who _had_ died at Kaer Morhen—the ones lost in the pogrom, the children who died to the Trial of the Grasses—had been burnt instead of buried. Most of the witchers memorialized here didn't have any part of their bodies interred beneath the markers. 

(Another thing these men hadn't known, some part of Geralt thought dryly, beneath the slowly-blooming horror.)

So there weren't many bodies here. But there were tokens buried beneath the plain gravestones: wolf's-head medallions for the witchers who'd died in battle, bits of clothing or favorite toys for the ones who'd never made it out of childhood. And there were memories here, left by the ones who'd come here to mourn the dead. 

And now, joining them, were the bodies of three men, their corpses twisted in unnatural shapes and their blood splashed across the weeds in the stones in rust-dark rivers. One of them was face up, grasping at nothing with his eyes black and glistening; the other two laid in crumpled heaps that were barely distinguishable as human.

So. In the end, he hadn't need to come here at all.

Geralt stood among the bodies a long moment, staring at them and thinking of nothing in particular. There had always been a great many dead at Kaer Morhen; now there were three more. Soon he'd have to carry the bodies away, find somewhere to leave them that wasn't among his brothers. He could stay here a little longer, though, among the graves of his fellow witchers. Among the memories.

There was a noise behind him. Geralt turned, expecting Avild, and—

He blinked. 

He recognized the face of the boy standing behind him. Lucin, he'd been called—he'd been a year or two older than Geralt, timid and shy. He remembered, too, watching him die: painfully, over a period of weeks, choking on the fluid building up in his lungs as his body rejected the witcher transformations. Lucin hadn't been the first boy Geralt saw die, or the last, but somehow when he remembered those days it was always Lucin's red, terrified face that he thought of first.

"I," Geralt said, and then his mouth closed on words he couldn't bring to mind. He didn't know what to say; he felt suddenly like he was drowning, floundering in water that was unexpectedly deep.

This had to be an illusion. Some trick of a monster, or of the necromancers lying dead at his feet. Geralt needed to fight. But as Lucin stepped closer, Geralt only stood there. Rooted in place.

"You look older," Lucin said, peering up at him, the same quaver in his voice that Geralt remembered so well.

"Yes," Geralt said.

For some reason, that made Lucin nod. He took hold of Geralt's hand, both of his much smaller hands wrapping together around his wrist. His fingers felt warm where they touched Geralt's skin, free from rot or the cold of the grave. Living. 

"Come with me," he insisted, tugging him forward.

 _Run,_ screamed his instincts.

But he was curious, and Lucin was here, and his mind felt strangely dulled, far away from the adrenaline that this should have been raising within him. There were dead witchers enough at Kaer Morhen—why shouldn't he see them now?

Geralt stepped forward, letting Lucin guide him—

And then a crossbow bolt slammed through Lucin's form, what should have been solid flesh tearing apart like fog under the force of the strike. Geralt twisted, looking for the attacker, his heart pounding loudly in his chest.

"Geralt!" shouted Avild, running towards him, crossbow clutched in one hand. "What the hell is this?"

Avild. Avild was here. Of course.

Reality hit Geralt, and with it the fear he should have been feeling all along. For the first time, now that Lucin's form wasn't taking up his attention, he could see what the boy had been distracting him from: more shapes twisting out of the fog and shadows, caught between insubstantial wisps of smoke and something that looked unnervingly, grotesquely real.

These weren't, Geralt suspected, what the necromancers had been hoping to summon when they came to Kaer Morhen. But they were what they had gotten: the shades of dead witchers, bodiless, half memory and half spirit and nothing that belonged in this realm.

Avild reached his side, breathing hard, working on reloading his bow as he came to a halt beside Geralt. 

"So. Good thing we came, hm?"

"Maybe," Geralt said. He didn't want to say just how close he'd come to following Lucin—to walking into the fog with the rest of them. Good thing Avild had come, at least. 

"Can't say they look too happy to be here." Avild snorted. "Not that I can blame them, _I'm_ not happy to be here and I'm alive. Your keep's a lot grimmer-looking than I expected it to be."

"It's not any better on the inside."

Avild laughed. "Yeah. I'll bet. So, what's our plan here?"

Geralt eyed the forms. He couldn't guess exactly what was happening to them—not with ill-formed, failed magic like this—but he had a feeling whatever it was would only get worse the longer these half-witchers stayed among the living. Already the shifting shapes seemed more solid. There were more features Geralt could recognize among them—eyes, skin, the impressions of hair and clothing...

Some of them had faces of men he'd known. Fellow witchers he'd fought besides. Boys he'd watched die in training accidents or beneath monsters' claws or when the Trial of the Grasses proved too much for them. The past given shape.

They weren't the people he'd known. Not exactly. They looked half-real, half-born from magic. They were wild things beyond human comprehension catching hold of old memories, with the necromancer's magic forcing them to tether themselves to this place with the faces and forms of the people memorialized here.

That didn't mean Geralt wanted to leave them like this. That he wanted them to suffer.

"We need to stop whatever's tethering them here. The necromancer's bodies—"

Avild grimaced. "I was afraid you'd say that." 

Geralt unsheathed his sword as he followed Avild back over to the necromancers' battered forms. One wandering spirit, wearing golden eyes and the vague shape of a man, tried to grab hold of Geralt as he passed. Geralt swung his blade through its form, turning it smoke, and continued on.

Eyes narrowed in thought, Avild watched Geralt's strike. "They seem confused."

"They are. They'll grow less confused as time wears on, I suspect. And angrier."

"Oh, _wonderful_ ," Avild muttered.

He dropped to the ground beside the face-up necromancer's body, Geralt taking watch at his shoulder as he did. The spirits were still unfocused, still moving aimlessly like fog, but more and more their attention seemed to be turning towards him and Avild. They wouldn't have much more time before this turned into an out-and-out fight. 

"This was the man who took the lead," Avild said, staring at the body. "Couldn't have happened to a nicer person."

"Sorry," Geralt said. 

It had been important to Avild that he get the final blow. And now this. 

But Avild just shook his head. "These ghostly friends of yours deserved it as least as much as I did. And it looks like they did a pretty good job of it."

That, Geralt couldn't deny. The man had died screaming.

Without another moment's delay, Avild went digging into the dead man's clothing, his brows furrowed in concentration.

"You'd know better than I what we're looking for," Geralt told Avild, speaking quickly with an eye on the approaching figures. "A focus of some sort, a talisman or a symbol. Anything they could have focused the magic into. They would've used it back when they had you—"

"No need for the lecture," Avild said. His voice was grim and cold with anger. "I know exactly what I'm looking for."

With a noise of recognition, he pulled free a small silver medallion and held it up into the air.

A cat's head, hissing with its ears pinned back, one paw in frame with its claws extended as if to strike. A witcher's medallion. Avild's medallion.

For half a second, Geralt almost scolded him—their lives were at stake here, there would be time later for Avild to hunt down his belongings—but then he caught sight of the grim, determined look in Avild's eye, the way he were clutching the medallion like a precious, delicate thing. Like it was something he never expected to see again.

"Bad luck all around," he sighed, and then with one vicious twist he crushed the medallion between thumb and forefinger.

There was a scream, high and piercing, a creature's dying wail; a flash of light so bright Geralt had to throw up his hands to protect himself; and, then, finally, silence.

Geralt blinked, shaking away the afterimages for the second time that day.

The clearing was quiet and still again, the only movement the wind through the overgrown weeds. The fog had lifted, taking with it the spirits growing within and the faces Geralt had thought he'd never seen again.

He breathed deep, taking in the cold mountain air. Then he turned to Avild, still crouching above the necromancer's body and staring down at the crushed medallion between his hands.

Avild's blow had distorted it—hints of its original shape were still there, but Geralt would never have been able to guess what the pendant had once been if he hadn't already known.

"...I'm sorry," he said finally. It didn't seem enough—but then, he couldn't imagine what would.

"It's fine." Avild sighed, then slung the damaged medallion back around his neck. "I think I knew—or I felt it, at least. That they intended to do something with it. They seemed... intent on it, somehow, I suppose? And at least this way it's back with me. Better than them keeping it."

"Still. It's unfortunate."

Avild barked out a laugh. "You're not wrong about that. I'd try to fix it, but—would that end up bringing the spell back? Because I can't say I'd appreciate having a whole lot of you hanging around me all at once. One of you is enough." He gave Geralt an intent look. "And speaking of one—you doing all right, yourself? I'm guessing I know who those dead men were, considering our location."

"I'm fine," Geralt said. "They were just spirits."

"Right. Completely fine. That's why you almost let one lead you off into the afterlife, I expect." Avild held up a hand when Geralt tried to protest. "No, please, let's not. I know what I saw, and"—he grimaced—"frankly, I'm not at my best now either. I'd rather not turn this into an argument we both don't need."

"You did start it, you know," Geralt told him, sounding rather more surly than he'd intended, but he let the defense he'd been planning drop.

Avild had seen what he'd seen, after all. Geralt couldn't take that back.

A few moments of silence, and then, from Avild: "You want help carting these bodies off, by the way?"

That, at least, Geralt was happy enough to accept.

* * *

Tossing the bodies away, and then, at Avild's surprisingly-sentimental insistence, cleaning the blood of the gravestones, took them well into the afternoon. Not that it mattered, really; there was no chance they were leaving Kaer Morhen tonight, not without how furiously they'd ridden their horses on the way up here.

Roach was the first thing he took care of, even before the bodies: tack off and cleaned and set aside in one of the keep's old abandoned stables, a proper cool down this time, and then enough water hauled out from the nearby stream that she wouldn't have to drink from the brackish water in the trough of the old paddock. Stygga was even more tired than Roach, though again Geralt found himself impressed with her—it was as if she'd inherited every last bit of her new master's stubbornness and was determined to outpace all of Geralt's expectations.

He and Avild worked beside each other in companionable silence. It was perhaps the longest he'd heard Avild ever go without uttering a word. Geralt couldn't help the twinge of regret that pulled at him every time he caught sight of the cord of Avild's medallion. If he hadn't hesitated in the face of the spirits, if he'd had a better plan to begin with, then perhaps...

But the medallion was broken now, and dwelling on it was of no more use than dwelling on the faces he'd seen.

It was near dusk by the time Avild spoke again. He'd finished washing away the last of the blood with an ancient scrap of cloth, and he looked up at the keep as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

"So," he said, "I'll take it I'll be getting the tour of your... charming palace?"

Geralt grunted. "Not much choice."

"Can't believe it." Avild shook his head. "I had mentors who would've died for a look inside your keep, and now that I'm being offered it on a silver plate—I have to say, it seems a bit less glamorous than the stories I was told. And, admittedly, a little bit less packed with horrible torture devices and ravenous wild dogs too." At Geralt's raised eyebrow, he shrugged. "We were trainees. We told stories. Had to get the creativity out somehow, you know?"

"It used to be more glamorous," Geralt admitted. "Not too many of us now, either."

"Well, so long as you've actual beds tucked away in there, it'll beat out all recent accommodations."

"We do. You might not like them."

"Ah, you know, I'll take my chances." Avild stood, wiping the dirt from his trousers. "Shall we go?"

* * *

Walking back into the Great Hall of Kaer Morhen was like walking into a strange, melancholy dream: the beds were still there, the tables, the great murals on the walls, the cages and traps and bits of monster remains they'd once used to train all scattered around the darkened halls. If it weren't for the eerie silence of it and the thick layer of dust over everything, it could almost be as though he'd stepped back into the past once more.

Had Vesemir stopped returning to this place too? Or did he just not care to keep it clean? Either seemed entirely possible.

A shiver ran down Geralt's spine as he walked further inside, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. He'd be glad for morning, and a chance to leave this place.

"Well," Avild said. "I can see why you wolves all end up so cheerless, now."

"We can't all be so pleasant as you," Geralt said dryly.

"Ah, come on, now, I never said our lot were more _pleasant_. But exciting? We have you beat there, you have to admit."

Geralt was fairly certain that whatever Avild considered excitement, he wanted no part in it.

With another glance around, Avild pulled out a half-broken chair from a pile in the corner, then kicked at the rest of the timber there.

"Shall we start a fire?" he asked.

"What, indoors?"

That got him a toothy grin. "Is anyone going to stop us? And besides, it's our last night together—shouldn't I be allowed to influence you, just a little?"

"You definitely shouldn't," Geralt said.

But somehow he found himself helping to pull the old, rotted wood out onto the middle of the ancient stone floor and spark it into a small but cheery blaze. It lit the far walls and the murals there in flickering red, casting shadows across the faces of the people painted there.

Dinner came from Geralt's rations. Avild talked as he ate, aimlessly, not expecting to be answered, and Geralt stared down at his simple meal and thought.

Their last night together. It made sense, obviously—it was the only course of action that did. Would reason would they have to travel together beyond the end of this hunt? Two witchers, a Cat and a Wolf, each of them standing out like a sore thumb... They'd have a mob down on their heads in half a year, and that was if one of them didn't manage to aggravate the other into committing murder before then.

It wasn't even that Geralt wanted company. He was more than used to the silence. He enjoyed it. But—

It would be different, not having Avild around. It had been strangely easy to get used to his presence.

"Ah," Avild sighed when he was done. "This place has a proper room for us somewhere, I hope? If you tell me we're supposed to sleep in this hall, I may just cut my losses and flee back into the woods now."

"There's rooms upstairs," Geralt said. "A lot of them."

Avild grinned, a knowing look in his eyes. "Geralt. You'd deny us our last night together?"

It was a good thing, Geralt supposed, that Avild was feeling well enough to start needling him again. He'd been quiet so long, Geralt had been beginning to wonder whether something even more serious might be wrong. And if this amused him, then—well, fair enough, really. He'd helped Geralt enough today that he deserved his fun, even if it was at Geralt's expense.

"Need to check your wounds, I suppose," Geralt allowed.

Avild sighed again, more forcefully this time. "So cold. No fun at all."

"Sorry to disappoint."

This time, Geralt almost meant it.

Once they'd done what little clean up their dinner needed and stamped the fire out, Geralt led Avild up the winding staircase that led to the towers—and the rooms therein—of Kaer Morhen. The room here was a giant, circular thing with windows on all sides, a massive bed in the middle and the wreckage of expensive baubles all around.

Geralt had never been allowed in here as a child. His younger self would be jealous of him if he could see this. Right now, though, all he cared about was that this place was an escape from the memories that permeated every other part of Kaer Morhen.

"Well!" Avild's eyes widened as he took it all in. "This is a treat. The fates making up for every other bit of bullshit I've had to endure lately, I suppose."

"That or hospitality. You pick." The good thing about Kaer Morhen was that it meant at least a partial restock of Geralt's supplies. He dumped his newly-gathered stock onto the bed—fresh bandages, or at least fresh _er_ bandages; boiled water; potions and poultices that hadn't yet gone bad and likely wouldn't for another thousand years—and motioned to Avild to slip his shirt off.

Whatever shame he'd had over this once, the past five days had destroyed it. He undressed easily, exposing a mosaic of half-healed scars and a barely-healed-over puncture wound that had once again begun oozing dark blood.

Geralt frowned as he began to attend to them—tracing the lines of Avild's muscle with his hands, feeling the edge of the wound. "They'll be able to heal properly now, at least."

"Assuming, of course, that I don't run off on a cross-country trek with the next witcher I meet as soon as I'm out of your sight."

Geralt snorted. "True enough."

"Ah, don't worry." Avild twisted enough to see Geralt's face. "You're a special case. I wouldn't run off with just anyone."

"I'm flattered," Geralt said dryly. And then, gripping Avild's shoulder: "Now, hold _still_."

There was a strange sort of intimacy in the act tonight. Perhaps it was the close quarters, or the fact that they were perched on the end of a bed, or the extravagance of their surroundings giving Avild's bare skin a strange sort of importance. Maybe it was simply that this was the last night: he wouldn't see Avild again after this, and that gave a finality to the experience.

Either way, it was all in his head, and Geralt was good at ignoring the strange paths his mind sometimes took. No doubt Avild had been in a hundred beds in a hundred situations more intimate than being patched up by one beaten-up witcher after a morning spent chasing away ghosts and an afternoon spent washing away blood.

Still. Geralt went slowly, working carefully up and down Avild's back where the worst of the remaining wounds were until everything was as clean as he could possibly make it. If nothing else, he wanted to make sure Avild healed well. 

"There," Geralt said, once the last of it was finally done. He stood, to put away what few potions he had spare, and—

Avild's wrist caught his, pulling him back down, and then Avild's mouth caught his as well.

His lips were chapped from the cold. His skin was calloused and warm, marked with scars. His teeth, when they grazed Geralt's lip, had a fang-like edge to them.

Geralt stood there, half-standing over Avild, frozen in place by his own disbelief and the feeling of their bodies together.

One beat, two—and then Avild pulled back, a frown on his face and poorly-concealed worry in his eyes.

"Have you never been with anyone before?"

"I have," Geralt said. He didn't add, _Normally I pay for the privilege_ , because there was something uniquely pathetic about admitting it out loud.

"Ah." Avild's frown turned to a full-on wince as he let go of Geralt's wrist. "Then I've just—misunderstood entirely, haven't I? You can't blame me, really, you Wolves are impossible to read."

Geralt didn't speak; he was still trying to will his thoughts to collect into something coherent.

"I'll..." He sighed. "Look, if you'd rather I sleep somewhere else—"

That, finally, was enough to spur Geralt's brain into putting his thoughts together.

"No," he said, "you haven't misunderstood, I only..."

There was no good explanation for why he'd taken so long to catch on—or, at least, none he'd be willing to admit. So he did the next best thing, and kissed Avild back.

* * *

They went slow between them, a lazy sort of thing. Geralt was all too aware of Avild's injuries—the positions he shouldn't ask him to take, the places he couldn't put his hands—and Avild, for his part, fucked Geralt like he was relearning what pleasure was.

Part of Geralt wondered if that wasn't exactly what this was: Avild, given the opportunity of time and a willing partner, using Geralt to wash clean the memories of brutality and pain. If it was, though, Geralt didn't mind; he kissed him deep and made him groan, sucked bruises into any spot he could find unmarked skin, gave Avild use of his hands and his tongue and his thighs and anything else Avild wanted.

And it might have been slow, but it wasn't over quickly—by the time Geralt was finally exhausted, soaked in sweat and breathing hard, he'd lost track of just how many times he'd come. It seemed almost unfair—it wasn't that he'd never been with another witcher before, but those had been clumsy, hurried things between the trainees, stealing away into dark corner of Kaer Morhen quick enough that they wouldn't get caught. He hadn't known it could be like _this_ with someone just as inhuman as him.

Avild fell on top of him with a lazy groan, kissing idly at the junction of neck and shoulder even as he seemed about ready to fall asleep right there.

"Good enough?" Geralt asked.

Avild laughed into Geralt's skin. "More than. If I'd known how much stamina you Wolves had, I'd've urged our school to bury the hatchet decades ago."

"What a shame."

"What a shame indeed." 

He turned then, with a grace befitting his kind's namesake, and propped himself up on both elbows to look down at Geralt. The light was dim, its only source the moon and stars, but his eyes almost seemed to glow in it.

"You know," he continued, "I still owe you."

"You saved my life today," Geralt said. "You don't owe me anything anymore."

"Except for the cost of the potions, food, water, half the cost of the horse—and a night's stay in the famous keep of the Wolves, of course."

Geralt grimaced. "No. I don't..." He sighed. "Forget about all that. Please. I don't want you to owe me anything."

Avild's smile softened at the edges, becoming something more genuine than Geralt had ever expected to see cross his face. "I forgot how soft you were. Look, all I'm saying is—I don't have a way to repay you now. But I'll find a way, next time we meet. It's a promise."

Ah. Geralt finally caught on. _Next time we meet_ —it was a promise in more than one way.

Geralt might have smiled a little at that himself. He wasn't sure.

"All right," he said. "I'll hold you to it."

* * *

When Geralt woke, the sun was already high in the sky and the bed was empty. Geralt stayed there a moment, breathing in the scent of another person, feeling the faint hint of warmth still left behind, and then he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and rolled out of bed.

No time to waste. There was always more work to be done.


End file.
